A vehicle and the surrounding area are engulfed in flames after it was set on fire inside the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya, late on Sept. 11, 2012. / AFP/Getty Images

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

A Senate report on the Benghazi attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans bolsters Obama administration critics who suspected from the start that al-Qaeda was involved and that it was not a spontaneous protest that went out of control.

The report, released Wednesday by the committee's Democratic majority, said individuals affiliated with groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were in on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound.

Whether the attack was ordered by a high-level al-Qaeda chief or planned on short notice by people on the ground remains unclear, the report said. But the report left no doubt that it was an organized terrorist attack - a fact denied for days after the deaths by President Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Republicans say the finding again calls into question the motives at the time of Obama, who was embroiled in a re-election campaign that claimed al-Qaeda was largely defeated.

Rep. Darrell Issa, who heads the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Thursday that the administration knew from the beginning that Beghazi was an attack with terrorist elements linked al-Qaeda.

He said the report finding on al-Qaeda "should help bring public discussion beyond the misleading arguments of partisan voices that have attempted to downplay the significance of this terrorist attack that took the lives of four brave Americans."

The White House and Clinton have said that no one was sure it was a terrorist attack or that al-Qaeda was involved until well after the incident. But within 24 hours the CIA station chief in Libya reported that it was a terrorist attack, and the CIA advised the White House that it appeared likely that al-Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved.

The report alluded to "contradictory" intelligence accounts it said came out in the immediate aftermath of the attack that may have confused the picture of how the attack happened.

But Gen. Carter Ham, head of AFRICOM at the time of attack, said Defense officials did not believe the attack was from an out-of-control demonstration and had no evidence of it, according to declassified testimony released this week by House investigators.

Ham said a U.S. military surveillance drone was sending back to Washington real-time video of the attack within minutes of its start.

"When we saw a rocket-propelled grenade attack, what appeared to be pretty well-aimed small-arms fire - again, this is all coming second- and third-hand through unclassified, you know, commercial, cellphones for the most part, initially," he told House Armed Services.

"To me, it started to become clear pretty quickly that this was certainly a terrorist attack and not just not something sporadic."

He said his conclusion was relayed to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a member of the White House Cabinet.

But the White House has continued to insist that the nature of the attack was not clear and that was the reason for Obama and Clinton and then-U.N. ambassador Susan Rice saying the attack was the result of a protest over an anti-Islam video by an American filmmaker. Ham said he was not aware of any protest that night and never relayed such information to Washington, according to the declassified testimony.

White House spokesman Jay Carney says the Republicans are rehashing old ground to score political points against the president rather than help Americans stay safe.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for Obama's National Security Council, said the USA is "focused on bringing the perpetrators of the Benghazi attacks to justice."

The investigation "draws on the comprehensive authorities and capabilities of our law enforcement and intelligence communities," Hayden said.

The Senate report also named Ansar al Sharia, an al-Qaeda-allied militia operating based in Benghazi, as having taken part in the attack. Its founder in the Libyan city of Darnah, Sufian bin Qumu, is a former U.S. detainee who was released from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2007.

Also named was the Mohammad Jamal Network, headed by an Egyptian trained by al-Qaeda in the 1980s who answers to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, said Thomas Joscelyn, an analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who follows extremists in North Africa.

"Jamal was in direct contact with Zawahiri in 2011 and 2012. And, according to both the U.S. government and the United Nations, Jamal conspired with AQAP, AQIM and al-Qaeda's senior leadership," Joscelyn said.

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